The Great Influence Debate

It seems every so often a major debate arises because someone uses some math to redefine an accepted belief. Not a bad thing to happen as long as it is to improve mankind and not just to make a name for yourself. In fact, challenging current beliefs should be a regular occurrence.

This time it is about influence and I must say I’m concerned.

The Grudge Match

In the blue trunks we have the challenger, Duncan Watts, proclaiming the super influencer dead and raising the common man up on the pedestal as the new super being – power to the people! “Nobodies are the new somebodies” his sycophants scream from their blogs and Twitter accounts. Witness this interesting transcript where @GuyKawasaki (a super influencer under Gladwell’s model) echoes Duncan’s musings to the mesmerized crowd. (Warning! The transcript is long and chaotic, but worth the read just to see comments from everyone)

Quick question, if @GuyKawasaki was a nobody, would anyone have come to #techchat or RTed his comments? Irony? Maybe.

And in the red trunks we have the current champion, Malcom Gladwell, the godfather of the super influencer via The Tipping Point and champion to the elitist perspective of the power of the few. In his corner are the thousands upon thousands of marketers and companies who based their marketing strategies on reaching specific individuals to spread the good word.

Now the problem here is our champ is fighting with one hand behind his back because of his own views on using Social Media, opting instead for more traditional means such as speaking, his books and PR. With Malcolm’s absence from Twitter – does the champ stand a chance while every minute his idea empire is being besieged by Duncan’s minions?

If you believe, like I do, that ideas struggle for existence; rising and falling as they gain strength or weaken to competing ideas then this could be an interesting fight indeed. Natural Selection at work.

But before we get into the color commentary of our title fight, let’s first understand what the fight is about.

Somebodies, Nobodies and the Nature of Influence

So is there room for a third idea here on influence? One that lands squarely in the great gray area in between these two polar opposites. After all, how can a complex human condition such as influence be explained in such a black and white perspective? How can math or even Chaos and Complexity Theory, for all its power, truly understand a highly evolved and mostly subconscious powerful emotional layer such as how we influence each other?

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Picture This

One of the oft-overlooked elements in the routine of blogging is image selection. Now, not every blogger uses images, charts, graphs, or other visuals as part of their storytelling approach (Seth Godin, most notably, is almost always a text-only blogger).

But for those of us who do, our photos can be just as important and compelling as our written copy.

The art of communications and marketing is largely one of storytelling. As someone with small children, I can appreciate the necessity of images to help tell stories. Images can help to set expectations, evoke emotional responses, draw attention, provoke laughter, or symbolize irony, among hundreds of other things.

So you see, the cavalier approach to image selection simply won’t do for blogging. Or shouldn’t. Similarly, the sources and the rights of images needs to be taken just as seriously as choosing an image. This post is designed to help you think about where and how you choose images for your blog (or site, or brochure, or whatever), with some bonus content thrown in.

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Marketing Tool That Transcends Message & Media

Today’s marketing professional has an impressive tool kit at the ready. In addition to the staples of the past half-century or so, technology has created a whole new set that seductively promises to change the arithmetic and shrink things to manageable size. Where the world used to be an accessible oyster only for those with the budget, today’s venture can play in the global arena with even the scarcest of resources.

Okay — truth be told, many of us are still wrestling with pieces of the new tool-set. (Please submit all workable Social Media marketing strategies.)

But while in pursuit of promising new connections in an undeniably dynamic marketplace, it may be timely to revisit the tool that has always shaped, and will again change the discussion.

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The Relationship Commerce Revolution

We’re hearing more and more about “Relationship Commerce” these days – but how many of us actually understand its implications? I’ve spent years in the midst of the evolution of commerce: As traditional commerce shifted into a digital world, through it’s evolution into Social Commerce, and now as we come upon the brass ring – Relationship Commerce.

There are some guiding principals to Relationship Commerce. None seem drastically different on their own; though they seem radically new when applied to the realm of commerce:

Relationships matter. Discovering something you love is great, learning about it from someone you trust is even better.

Buying from someone you like is way more fun than buying from a BIG-BOX robot.

Shopping can be better.

Relationship Commerce is simple yet novel, it’s buying from people you know and trust.

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5 Standouts for a Business-Read Mashup

In our rapid-fire, digital generation, content comes to us—faster and from more sources than ever before. Regardless of its origin—Twitter, Google Reader, The Wall Street Journal, or your favorite blog—information is still king and great books are still treasures. Whether you’re a Gen Y in your first job, an On-Ramper who’s re-entering the workforce after raising children, or an executive in high gear, these five literary and corporate standouts will challenge your thinking and drive your differentiation.

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Social media: to plan or not to plan?


In the debate regarding whether or not social media should be planned, I typically fall on the “yes” side, while others may feel it should be more organic. Really, though, my answer is, “it depends who you are and what you’re doing.”

If you’re a large organization like Aurora Healthcare, you’re going to benefit from a more formal plan, for these reasons, according to Jamey Shiels, Aurora’s Director of Marketing:

“Our social marketing strategy is planned and documented. We have a corporate plan and smaller plans for internal partners that feed the larger plan. The documentation is critical for keeping groups focused on the long term strategy and goals. While documented, the material is not lengthy, one to two pages and is flexible to adapt to performance, user feedback and overall activity. Our success and ability to measure becomes easier to achieve with this approach.”

Yet, on the flip side, if you’re an individual, a small business, or a small, grassroots effort, having the “plan in your head” can be enough.

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Is Social Media the Cure for Apathy?

I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but somewhere over the last 50 years the majority of people in the world lost their mojo when it came to fighting for change. Didn’t matter whether the issue was big or small, even bad customer service and poor quality flourished because of the divide and conquer realities of slow one to one and the high cost of mass communication.

People grew tired and weak from being browbeaten into submission to the point where apathy set in when it came to believing in, mobilizing and exercising their power as an individual within society.

The ability for people to communicate, organize and take action around an issue or idea had become very slow, difficult and costly. Even more significantly, the poor results often seen by those who actually made the effort led many to accept “Is it really worth the bother?”

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The 5 Keys to Successful Online Demand Generation

It is good to hear senior marketing people beginning to talk turkey about online demand generation now that some of the luster and magic has worn off of social media. And while both customer behavior and online tactics have evolved, the essence of good online demand generation has stayed the same for the past decade; and really its boils down to 5 key factors to sustainable success online.

Before we get into the 5 keys, let’s first reach an understanding on what online demand generation really is.

First, this is well beyond generating a “lead” through a form or SEO/SEM tactics, although these may form a piece of the overall process. The way I like to describe it is this…

“From the point of first contact to the last time they (the customer) touches your online presence, you have created a defensible brand position in their mind for your product or service that leads directly or indirectly to self-qualified prospects for long term customer relationships and near term revenue.”

The art of generating demand, particularly in an ever increasing complex and noisy digital marketplace, requires an increasingly simple and targeted approach.

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I won’t over think. I will get something wrong. And I will REWORK

That is my way of doing things now. Thinking it through. Thinking of some ways to go about accomplishing my goals (strategies) and then deciding to do it.

I have been reading REWORK, by Jason Fried and David Hansson. With each chapter I feel as though I’m sitting in a church pew and listening to the preacher tell me things that are happening; things that have already happened and now that I know and have been told, some things that just shouldn’t happen at all.

I’ve read so many books on PR, Marketing, Networking and more. Now with starting a new business. I needed honesty. And I like Jason and David’s honesty in REWORK. They did it. They made mistakes. They thought it through. They decided on it. And REWORK and it is working beautifully!

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Extend your influence by extending trust: a social story

A stranger walks into your store and tells you about his problem. After asking him a few questions to help you understand the problem, you hand him a brand new pair of shoes and tell him to try them for couple weeks. “If they work,” you say, “just come back and pay for them. If they don’t, we’ll try a different pair.” Typical? Probably not.

That’s exactly what Jeff Milliman, the 1980 NCAA cross country champion, did in 1998 for Olivier Blanchard. Olivier wrote about his experience with Jeff in a 2005 blog post called That Bond of Trust. I caught up with Jeff today at his new home at Go Run, a part of Go Tri Sports, in downtown Greenville, South Carolina.


Social Story: Tell me about Olivier. A story of trust. from Trey Pennington on Vimeo.

Please note a few really cool things about this social story:

  • Jeff just did what he always does: listens to people and then applies his knowledge to try to help solve their problems.
  • Jeff is willing to take a risk in order to fulfill his passion.
  • Jeff did the unexpected and went the extra mile and SEVEN YEARS LATER the object of his generosity, Olivier Blanchard, wrote about it. (How many shoe salesmen have people writing glowing stories about them seven years after the sale, or seven hours?)
  • Jeff’s act of generosity and Olivier’s act of gratitude enabled an long lost friend to reconnect with Jeff after nearly 20 years apart.

That means you never can tell when the harvest of your generosity will come.

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